UMBC Gender and Women's Studies Students Write Back

A Mother’s Love

While doing my normal “news checkup” on CNN I came across this article that made me think.

The article is about mother’s with overweight toddlers who see it as normal, meaning they don’t realize that their child is overweight/obese. As mothers we want to see our children healthy and happy. But what does that translate to visually. What makes us know or believe our child is healthy and happy. Is it noticing some sort of growth and development as they transition through the phases of life? Is it noticing that their shoes don’t fit and they’re growing out of their shirts and attributing it to them growing up?

Whatever the reasoning behind a mother’s sometimes flawed view of their child, it is becoming a concern. A lot of these women don’t realize that their child is overweight which causes problems in and of itself. It isn’t just cute little baby fat. What can we do to correct these parents’ skewed views of their children in order to promote a healthier society? Because obesity rates are skyrocketing in our society. And we all know that children are vulnerable in many ways. How we raise them is important because it’s usually an indicator of how life will turn out for them. If they are obese as toddlers then it will not necessarily be something they grow out of. And this could be extremely dangerous with our already ridiculous obesity rates.

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This raises a lot of interesting questions. For starters, who gets to determine if/when a child is overweight? And then, what responsibility does a mother have to realize that situation? The demographics of the participants in the study seem to indicate that this needs to be looked at from a social as well as medical standpoint.

According to numbers from Feeding America (http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/child-hunger-facts.aspx), 16 million kids live in “food insecure” situations, where the next meal is not necessarily a given. Looking at it from this perspective, baby fat may well represent parenting success to the largest portion of study participants. Put simply, a fat child is one that is fed on a regular basis.

From another perspective, a mother who does not realize the weight of their child may not be taking it to regular doctor’s appointments. Why is that? Is it carelessness, or a lack of access to medical care?

It’s not necessarily surprising that the article puts the responsibility on what moms “see,” indicating that this is all about individual responsibility. But I think we need to step back and look at why this is happening, because it’s just as much our problem as it is the mom’s.